Off-licences cause drinking, except in London

If there’s a charity more careless in its use of statistics than Alcohol Concern, I’d like to know of it.

Its latest offence is a report, One on Every Corner, which attempts to prove a link between the prevalence of alcohol-related hospital admissions in under-18s and the density of off-licenses in the area. It’s a fine follow-up to its report in internet sites and underage drinking which I featured here, and the claim that London crime is supercharged by drink, here.

Under the heading Methodological Qualifications, the new report states: “This study did not set out to establish cause and effect.” Yet the previous page asserts that nearly 10 per cent of all alcohol specific hospital admissions in England, excluding London, are directly attributable to off-licence density, “meaning availability rather than any other external factor is the cause of one in ten of such harms”.

Why exclude London? Because no link was found for the London boroughs, so they were simply excluded to make the other results more persuasive. That’s chicanery, in my book. The explanation given for the failure to find a link in London is that young people there consistently consume less alcohol than the average in England – which is rather a contrast to Alcohol Concern’s earlier claim that alcohol-related crime is twice as high in London as elsewhere.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the claimed correlation between off-licence density and hospital admissions (London excluded) is correct. Does that prove that off-licences cause drinking? Or maybe that areas where drinking is more common in all age groups can support more off-licences?

You might as well argue that as areas with fewer bank branches tend to be poorer, it’s the absence of banks that causes poverty. Or, as David Poley of the Portman Group puts it: “I expect there is a correlation between wearing gold shirts and winning the football World Cup; this doesn’t mean that if England play in gold shirts they are more likely to win the next World Cup”.

One could add that the number of convictions for selling alcohol to under-age drinkers is falling, as regulations are more tightly enforced. But Alcohol Concern has an answer to that. It claims that young people access alcohol from off-licenses by getting friends, family, and casual acquaintances to buy it for them. So even if off-licenses aren’t breaking the law, their mere presence on the High Street contributes to more risky drinking.

The statistical analysis underpinning this report is attributed to Dr Nikki Coghill of the University of the West of England. I e-mailed her on Tuesday to try to establish if she was happy with the way her results had been presented. If she replies I’ll add her comments to this post.

Anonymous (not verified) wrote,

Fri, 09/09/2011 - 23:09

Alcohol Concern is actually a 'fake' charity. See http://fakecharities.org/2009/05/charity-291705/ for more. Suffice it to say they should be considered as a taxpayer funded lobbying firm, telling government departments what they want to hear.

Ray.

Russell Webster (not verified) wrote,

Sat, 10/09/2011 - 06:34

Can't argue with that. Although getting a quote from the Portman Group on alcohol-related harm is like asking Ernst Stavro Blofeld what he thinks of James Bond's ability to foil evil geniuses.

Rich (not verified) wrote,

Mon, 12/09/2011 - 08:32

So if we take the correlation-causation link seriously we will also conclude from this paper that alcohol makes teenage girls pregnant. All those virgin births!

CL (not verified) wrote,

Mon, 12/09/2011 - 08:59

This had a mention on Radio4's 'More or Less' last week, also pointing out the mistake of mixing up association with causality.

I did wonder if the data would allow for tracking local trends in outlets and hospital admissions to see whether a change in one was followed by a change in the other.

Matt Rawlings (not verified) wrote,

Fri, 16/09/2011 - 17:19

I think it needs to be pointed out that Alcohol Concern admitted that this was not a definitive survey, but that the link warrants greater investigation. Certainly it is easier to get alcohol then ever before and the rise in alcohol-related hospital admissions is undeniably shocking.

If we are serious about protecting our kids from the negative effects of alcohol (and there is plenty of evidence that many of our young people have a dangerous relationship with alcohol) then we need to look at availability and marketing, full-stop. The World Health Organisation and many other health experts endorse this view. And frankly I prefer the view of health professionals over alcohol industry press releases any day.

It is also worth mentioning that Nigel Hawkes, Straight Statistics, has an established relationship with the Portman Group and is blatantly anti-Alcohol Concern. Perhaps he would be willing to declare this association in future.